Now that the Very Effective Crowbar has been moved from being a mainlist SCP to the Log of Anomalous Items, I wonder if the same thing should be done to some other SCPs. Here's a list of some that, while I don't dislike them, I think would've been put in the Log if they were posted today.

Now, they all have decent photos (the orreries in particular) and they're in the positive ratings, so I'm not actually expecting them to get moved, but I'm just wondering what the procedure (if any) should be about moving around SCPs.

The sideways falling rock is unapologetically an anomalous item. The orreries also qualify. Disagree on Pterry, though - Pterry is a bona fide SCP, I think.

The orreries kinda still deserve their own article. I really think there should be a place for full articles for anomalous items. I also suspect that the anomalous items list would work even better if the items had designations (numerical or otherwise), which would mean we'd have a nomenclature system for anomalous-item-articles as well. They could be linked from the main list of anomalous items (and items that don't merit a full article would simply remain unlinked).

If people (read: Senior Staff / Mods / Admins) think this is a good idea, I volunteer for the grunt work.

Here's a vote of agreement on this idea from a fellow random user. The one potential drawback is that most or all of the items currently on the list are there at least in part because there just isn't enough meat in the idea to turn into a full article. Making some entries links to more extensive articles could prompt users to bloat the wiki with a bunch of articles written from very weak/thin/boring concepts. Granted, those would probably get downvoted to death, but still…

Yeah, putting them in a separate article would make them as vulnerable to getting downvoted into oblivion as everything else (not so if they're on the main list, but I think admins regularly patrol that). I am definitely not suggested a decrease in quality standard.

Wait… I am staff, I am protecting my own power at the expense of transparency! *packs his bags and heads for his new home in Washington DC*

But seriously, doesn't seem like a big deal. I don't like the urge to constantly churn through the wiki and get everything to the same set of "current" standards. If anything it should be obvious that the "current" standards are always changing. I think the only outcome of holding everything to the whim of current opinion would be that we lose a bunch of interesting old apocrypha in the process.

I don't like that there doesn't seem to be a place for anomalous items to have a full article of their own, except for interesting old apocrypha with grandfathered SCP status (and sometimes not even them).

See, the reason this page exists is because full page articles about anomalous items that are not interesting enough to be SCP objects are full page articles about things that are not interesting enough to be SCP objects.

That's a problem for two reasons.

One, this is the SCP wiki, a wiki for SCP articles, not warehouse thirteen. There is a distinct range of impressions our pages are intended to make, and "anomalous objects" decidedly do not make those impressions. There's not a place for anomalous objects to have their own pages. We did that on purpose.

Second, that would be damn boring. They're things that are not interesting enough to have their own articles.

Feel free to start an anomalous objects wiki elsewhere if you like, but that's not what we're about around here.

Moving on, there's something I feel needs to be addressed.

We're not moving any of those pages.

No member of staff has advocated moving or changing those articles. That's all noise from a few people who from the looks of things just woke up bored on a tuesday afternoon and decided to faffle about changing things for no reason. Those articles seem to all be positively rated and fairly well written pieces; there's no reason to mess with them at all.

No member of staff has advocated moving or changing those articles. That's all noise from a few people who from the looks of things just woke up bored on a tuesday afternoon and decided to faffle about changing things for no reason. Those articles seem to all be positively rated and fairly well written pieces; there's no reason to mess with them at all.

If they were created today, would they survive? That's the reason I've been posting up a kerfluffle - because I suspect (perhaps incorrectly) that they wouldn't, good article or not.

It's entirely possible that I, and some of the other crop of newbies, are misunderstanding this.

See, the reason this page exists is because full page articles about anomalous items that are not interesting enough to be SCP objects are full page articles about things that are not interesting enough to be SCP objects.

I couldn't agree more, which is why I wasn't talking about articles about anomalous items that weren't interesting enough to be SCP objects.

So maybe I (and others) really are completely misunderstanding this. I suspect there's quite a few newbies downvoting things because they could fit in the Log of Anomalous Items, even though they're plenty interesting on their own. I know I certainly thought that was community criteria for a downvote (even though I've never followed it myself).

Clarifying this could be pretty helpful.

Or, y'know, maybe I'm full of shit, in which case clarifying would still be helpful, just less so.

I don't like that there doesn't seem to be a place for anomalous items to have a full article of their own, except for interesting old apocrypha with grandfathered SCP status (and sometimes not even them).

This right here is what I was responding to.

If you must try to debate, at least pick a side, man.
The impression I'm getting here is that your opinion on what makes something interesting enough to be an SCP article and the community's opinion on what makes an interesting SCP article do not agree. There is nothing that anyone can do to help you with that, and there is no reason we should alter our established formats to allow for it.

If they were created today, would they survive? That's the reason I've been posting up a kerfluffle - because I suspect (perhaps incorrectly) that they wouldn't, good article or not.

Those articles, regardless of when they were posted, are on the wiki right this very moment and maintain a positive rating. That is all that matters. When a piece is created is a nonissue. If you vote differently based on the date an article was posted, that's your standard, but please don't expect other users to march to that drumbeat.

Articles get deleted when they fall below -5 and staff vote to delete them; If you have some sort of problem with which articles get deleted, vote accordingly, because it is the votes that decide. Posting up a rantstorm and calling for changes to established pages will not help you, and gets on other users' nerves.

(Ha, when I read this post in my email alerts it confused me even further. Your edits clear up a lot.)

If you must try to debate, at least pick a side, man.
The impression I'm getting here is that your opinion on what makes something interesting enough to be an SCP article and the community's opinion on what makes an interesting SCP article do not agree. There is nothing that anyone can do to help you with that, and there is no reason we should alter our established formats to allow for it.

That's incorrect, but your comment is definitely helpful as it tells me I'm being absolutely terrible at explaining myself. Egg on face.

I was under the impression that community standards meant that the articles listed in the first post, and any similar new articles of good quality, were doomed to be downvoted into oblivion (or shoehorned onto the anomalous items list, losing most of their flavor), simply because they didn't really require containment procedures despite being anomalous. I disagreed with this but figured I couldn't do much about it besides suggest that we make a place for that sort of thing.

However, your reply and eric_h's reply tell me that I, at least, clearly drew the wrong conclusion here, and that the main SCP list is a fine place for "that sort of thing", unless the article isn't interesting.

So, thank you for clarifying. Though now I feel like I should have taken this to PMs…. so I hope that this at least benefits other newbies as well.

Posting up a rantstorm and calling for changes to established pages will not help you, and gets on other users' nerves.

If my posts have gotten on other users' nerves, I certainly apologize. :/ Sigh. Next time I'll hold off before running my mouth off so much.

I rather like the idea of having an area for things that are damned odd but don't require more of a containment protocol than "Stick it in a shoe box, put it on a shelf, and remember to file your paperwork on the way out". It gives you some breathing room to flesh out the world while sticking to the "This is a big list of internal documents" format. Perhaps you could actually create a form. Descriptive Title, Anomalous item designation number, retrieval location, and a field limited to 4-600 characters for a description.

I mean, sure, a wind up monkey that winds itself up isn't that weird, relatively speaking. But it's still an apparent violation of the laws of thermodynamics and if a university physics lab gets a hold of it they might start asking some uncomfortable questions. I imagine that the SCPF has whole warehouses full of things like "A shoe full of human tongues. Gross, ticklish, but otherwise unremarkable" and "eternal flashlight. always works, never goes out, no batteries". Stuff that you don't hold on to because it's dangerous or even that interesting. But if enough of it gets out to the public it could blow the whole game! Public inquiries, congressional investigations, or god forbid investigative journalists!

Anomalous Items are by definition things worthy of a brief mention, but not a full SCP writeup. Who decides what's worthy? The community…therefore you, by voting (and as an author, by deciding whether or not to write a full SCP page for your idea).

Is there room on the edge to disagree? Sure. You may downvote an SCP because you think it wasn't an interesting enough idea to write up, and if enough people agree with you, the page will disappear as an SCP and maybe the item will end up on the Anomalous Items page. If it stays a positively-rated SCP, you'll just have to accept that folks don't agree with you and the thing is in fact an SCP. I would be pissed off if one of my positively-rated SCPs got downgraded to an Anomalous Item, just because someone decided it was, outside of the voting system.

Conversely, you might see an Anomalous Item on the list that you think is interesting enough to write up as a full page. Get permission from the original author and go for it, I'd say. The community will tell you if you're right.

Wow. I hadn't expected that this question would bring this kind of response.

I'm perfectly happy with the Senior Staff being the final arbiters of any future moves (like they are with -ARCs) and will defer to their judgment. I also take the point that constantly revising entries to meet current standards would become very navel-gazing very quickly.

Thanks for the responses, and I'm sorry if I caused any annoyance. It was purely unintentional.

I also take the point that constantly revising entries to meet current standards
would become very navel-gazing very quickly.

Yep. And there was the "mass edit" where no one could post anything new for about three months…I don't think anyone enjoyed that much. But I think the fact that old articles don't necessarily appear to get ratings in accordance with current standards is at the heart of these "meta" threads about voting standards and category changes. While some borderline SCPs do fall out of fashion over time, there are others where you end up saying "wow, that wouldn't have lasted if it were posted today!" and it doesn't really make sense, especially if you're newish and trying to figure out what makes a good SCP.

I think that happens because of a combination of:

1. Old SCPs were rated by people who are no longer active on the wiki.
2. Old SCPs don't get read/re-read as often as one might think.
3. For various reasons, not everyone wants to change their old votes when standards change.

It's a quirk where the voting system doesn't work out the way one might think it should.